Technology neutral frameworks remain critical to Africa’s ICT sector

In its sixth consecutive year, Open Access, the ICT industry’s biggest African networking event will take place from 13th to 14th November at the Cullinan Hotel & the Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town. Hosted by FibreCo, a leading open access carrier service provider and Teraco, Africa’s most connected data centre, the event will bring together over 500 delegates from across the global ICT sector, encouraging better co-operation in the industry.

Jan Hnizdo, managing director, Teraco, says that this event, now in its sixth year, pays homage to the incredible work done within the ICT industry to interconnect and fully embrace the use of a technology neutral framework: “This approach encourages innovative, low-cost delivery to users; as well as market entry from smaller, local companies without fear of competition from infrastructure providers themselves. Teraco is excited by the industry response to this annual event. By networking together, we live the open approach and encourage growth of this important market sector. The future success of African technology will come from the ability of the various ICT players to embrace open access and build a powerful ecosystem for the continent.”

2018’s event has attracted several exciting sponsors including Facebook, Linx, Tejas Networks, CMC Networks and NAPAfrica. Simon Harvey, FibreCo CEO, says that Open Access has grown into a useful and forward-thinking industry event aimed at encouraging the concept of open access: “With a one network approach, each brand within the ecosystem needs the other, its symbiotic and vital to the overall success of the open access philosophy. Those involved in this year’s event represent the various touchpoints within a network and ecosystem. By bringing them together, as hosts, we hope to encourage further collaboration and overall success across the continent.”

Kicking off on Tuesday 13th November 2018 with bilateral meeting opportunities, the Open Access networking event will take place on Wednesday 14 November at 19h00. For more information or to register visit www.open-access.co.za.

About Teraco

Teraco is the first provider of resilient, vendor neutral data environments in South Africa. Clients benefit from the cost savings and improved resilience of securely housing their information systems and networking equipment in a colocation facility purpose-built and operated to global best practice by an expert organisation with an absolute focus on data centre technology and infrastructure.

Founded in 2008, Teraco Data Environments has brought international best practice in vendor neutral data centre management to South Africa to give businesses a technically superior, physically safer and lower cost environment for their information systems. As the local telecommunications market began to deregulate, Teraco’s founders recognised an opportunity for a truly vendor neutral data centre offering in South Africa. The possibility of providing a service that was not tied to any Carrier or ISP became not only technically feasible and economically viable, but increasingly desirable to South African enterprises which needed unrestricted choice in how they interconnected their facilities and connected to the Internet.